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Friday, September 28, 2018

An evolving legend?

“The Water
Horses of Loch Ness” is a book by Roland Watson, a crypto-zoologist researching
the Loch Ness monster and similar beings. Watson is brave enough to investigate
all reports about unknown creatures in or around the world famous Scottish
lake, including the strangest ones. In “When Monsters Come Ashore” he
investigated claims that the Loch Ness monster has been observed *on land*. In
this book, he takes a closer look at the old Highland legends about Water
Horses, Kelpies and Water Bulls. The Water Horse in particular was associated
with Loch Ness long before the famous 1933 sighting of a dinosaur-like creature
that triggered the current monster craze. Watson seems to think that older
observations of mysterious creatures at Loch Ness somehow prove that something
really is down there. After reading the book, I beg to differ. In fact, this
work made me more skeptical to the whole idea of lake-monsters, especially if
read together with “Lake Monster Traditions” by Michel Meurger and Claude
Gagnon. Rather than proving the existence of a cryptid, the historical
perspective points towards an evolving legend.

The original
“Loch Ness monster” was *very* different from the dinosaur-plesiosaur-reptilian
habitually observed today. The Water Horse is a supernatural being, a kind of demon,
which frequently moves around on land in the form of a saddled and bridled
horse. It somehow lures travelers or children to mount it, perhaps by hypnosis,
and then runs down into the water, drowning the unlucky riders. In some
stories, the Water Horse can even speak! (There is a similar legend in Sweden,
but here the “the brook horse” is explicitly said to be the equine form of the
Neck, an evil merman of humanoid countenance.) There is no way the Water Horse
could possibly be a real flesh-and-blood animal, and the same goes for its more
jovial cousin the Water Bull (unless you think an unknown breed of hippopotami
lived in Scottish lochs until a few centuries ago).

So where did the
dinosaur stereotype come from? Well, it seems it did emerge out of nowhere (or
out of pop culture) in 1933. Yes, there are older observations of a dinosaur-like
creature at Loch Ness, *but most of them didn´t come to light until after the
iconic 1933 observation*, when people around the loch suddenly “remembered”
seeing dinosaur-like creatures 50 or 60 years earlier. Thus, these observations
are clearly contaminated by the 1930´s dino craze. Indeed, it seems the monster
of the late 19th century is a transitional form between the Water
Horse and the dinosaur, having both a long neck, a small head and a huge mane!
Also, how come nobody today sees any Water Horses or Water Bulls? Did they
suddenly go extinct or what (maybe the Nessie-saur ate them)? It´s also
intriguing to note that Aleister Crowley, who lived at Loch Ness shortly before
the Nessie craze, had heard nothing about dinosaur-like creatures supposedly living
in the loch…

The only way to
salvage the idea that a monster lives at Loch Ness is to assume that it´s some
kind of supernatural creature, which for reasons all its own shape-shifts
according to the cultural expectations of the viewer (and doesn´t like
Crowley!). Or perhaps several supernatural creatures? Watson is brave enough to
discuss the speculations of Tony “Doc” Shiels and the late Ted Holiday, and he
was a personal friend of the latter. In fact, I think Watson once subscribed to
the paranormal theory himself. Thus, he isn´t overtly hostile to it, but
nevertheless tries to argue for a flesh-and-blood solution to the mystery. In
the end, he decides to be undecided on the exact identity of the Loch Ness
monster. Perhaps we´re dealing with several different unknown animals. Perhaps
it´s a creature so strange that it has zero resemblance to any other form,
living or extinct.

Personally, I´m
even more convinced after reading “The Water Horses of Loch Ness” that Nessie,
whatever else it might be, can´t be a flesh-and-blood cryptid. Spirit or
hallucination? That is the question.